Gregory - 2025-01-30

The first method:
Okay now I have an encrypted full system hard drive with veracrypt. I don't decrypt it. Okay now I shut down OS. Once it's shut down, it's an in an encrypted state. I use USB Reflect or another OS on another computer and load it as secondary.

One is the MBR partition (it's encrypted) and the full OS partition (it's encrypted). Now realizing that is indeed encrypted. You can still actually clone it to an image using Reflect. The downside of this is that, it must encrypt the whole 500GB partition.

Now someone is claiming that veracrypt does not like that method.
""I booted into the clone HDD, or tried to, and realized that I could not decrypt it. Somehow, the disk encryption in VeraCrypt uses the disk info as part of its security. Maybe disk serial number or something unique to the disk. Meaning, a perfect clone will not decrypt. As the software realizes it has become a clone and refuses to boot.""

So lets say this, I clone the encrypted drives with veracrypt. I go to restore it because I have a problem with my OS or the OS bricked or whatever. But I have a back up image. I restore on the main OS hard drive as encrypted.

So essentially I clone the full os partition as encrypted and restore as encrypted. After the restoration process. I hook up the main OS encrypted drive. I boot it up. It asks for a password and I assume it works just fine with this method? Or it does not because of some security issue?

The second method:

But I wanted to try the second method which might be helpful to save hard drive space. As Reflect backups up the full image OS drive based on how much it's used.

So I want to make back ups once in a while. So I do this method:

I de-encrypt the drive. I'm sure I don't delete any file on the drive. I shut down the computer. I load reflect on it's own operating system or other hard drive. I back up the drive as a image with reflect with another encrypted container on USB. The transfer remains encrypted.

But here is the issue I might have once I do the restoration process.

If I restore the image file that is now on the encrypted container (to the main OS hard drive) Does the restore process cause the main OS to delete these files now leaving me vulnerable to my personal data. It would be as if I was using my main OS hard drive and I have it unencrypted and I deleted file. Now that file is now vulnerable?

Because someone claims when it restore it wipes. It now is deleted all those files on the unencrypted drive. It would be as if I was using the main OS unencrypted and I deleted a file. And that file will now be vulnerable.

What do you guys do in this situation? Just clone as encrypted and restore as encrypted. Leaving a big file. Although someone said this:

""I booted into the clone HDD, or tried to, and realized that I could not decrypt it. Somehow, the disk encryption in VeraCrypt uses the disk info as part of its security. Maybe disk serial number or something unique to the disk. Meaning, a perfect clone will not decrypt. As the software realizes it has become a clone and refuses to boot.""